The Eye of the Beholder
by ChibiRisu-chan
Summary: Shuichi's staying in Tokyo for several months. Will Yuki's sanity survive? (Written in 2002 and unlikely to be finished anytime soon...)
1. Default Chapter

**The Eye of the Beholder **

written in 2002 and unlikely to be finished any time soon -- just that there were two reasons I wanted to post this:

(A) One reviewer asked if I'd ever written Gravi fanfic so I wanted to post this for browsing and say hi, yes I did, and thanks for actually reading my webpage!

(B) (slightly toning down the rantage) The last review I got on Side Effects (and on a couple other things too) was someone complaining about how long it's been since I updated -- except it was particularly irritating on Side Effects since I just posted the one-shot with the explicit purpose of saying "look, I had an attack of real life, but I'm not slacking off for no purpose." People who complain about "why haven't you updated?" seem to have no concept of the fact that my providing their entertainment is _not_ more important than my ability to sleep or work or keep my job.

And I'm having a sudden attack of sympathizing with Yuki about the grouchy writer syndrome. I have a life, and a more-than-full time job, and I was lucky to get four or five hours of sleep per night this past month! I did _not_ have time to write fanfiction when I was busy dealing with real life commitments including the job that actually _pays_ me to keep a roof over my head. Comments like "Why haven't you updated" or "Why aren't you writing" or "I'm not going to bother to log in since you haven't updated" (yes, I got that one too) _don't_ make me want to update faster -- they make me want to beat my head against the screen, scream, and ignore the damn computer until I get done fuming about how much people who've never worked a writing job fail to understand that fanfiction is a _lower_ priority than things that _pay_ so that you can keep your apartment roof over your head... snarl fume growl... yeah, I'm having a very Yuki day right now. .

Saying "I'm looking forward to more" is not a problem at all -- that's _encouraging_, and says that the review writer _understands_ that real life happens. I've got no problems with that. I like that kind of review and am grateful to get them.

I've just got major problems with people who complain that I'm slow and demand updates like they're a right and whine when they don't get updates as fast as they want. I'm a professional. Pay me to write, and you get updates on your schedule, because that's what pros do in exchange for the pay. But nobody pays for fanfic. That means nobody gets to demand updates, because real life and the jobs that pay have GOT to come first.

anyway, on with the reformat and paste job...

* * *

"You're married?" Ryuuichi said, looking up from where he was tying Kumagoro's ears around a pencil. "When did that happen?" 

"Seven years ago," Sakano said, rueful. "If you don't mind, Sakuma-san, the original point was..."

"Did I give you a wedding present?"

"Sakuma-san," Hiroshi said, "can you wait just a minute?"

"Not if I didn't give him a wedding present for seven whole years! Did I?" Ryuichi asked anxiously.

"Yes, you did, Sakuma-san," Sakano said, gathering his patience, and reflecting that life around the combination of Ryuichi and Shuichi had to be very good practice for handling babies who, sooner or later, turned into first three-year-olds and then seven-year-olds. "So anyway, what I've been trying to say--"

"What was it?"

"My wife is... well... having a difficult time, and..."

"No, the wedding present!"

Even Shuichi sighed. That, Sakano thought, was rather a case of the pot and the kettle, but still... "It was a stuffed bunny, Sakuma-san."

"So the baby will have a Kumagoro to play with," Ryuichi said, relieved. "That's fine, then." He went back to knotting Kumagoro's ears around the pencil, then tried to write something with it. Maybe Kumagoro was going to be a credited lyricist on their next album... Sakano called his mind back to the meeting's purpose with a shake of the head.

"So I was wondering," he said for about the dozenth time, "if N G might be willing to shift our schedules around so that Bad Luck could stay around Tokyo for rehearsals and recording, rather than another tour? Bad Luck was already scheduled to start work on another CD four months from now; if we could move that forward a little... I... um... I really don't want to leave her, at a time like this... if it wouldn't be too much of an inconvenience..."

"Inconvenience?" Touma said quietly. "You're talking about your child, Sakano-kun. That's more than worth any inconvenience, isn't it?"

"You're talking about your child," K added dryly. "You're going to have at least eighteen years of inconvenience to deal with. Better start practicing now."

"That's not as reassuring as it could be, you know," Sakano mumbled, polishing his glasses on the tail of his shirt.

* * *

Hiroshi reached over and scrubbed his knuckles over the top of Shuichi's head. "What's wrong?" he asked. "I'd have thought you'd have been bouncing off the walls with an excuse to stay around the house for six whole months. ...Don't tell me you're fighting with him again." 

"No, just..." Shuichi stopped, and heaved a huge sigh. "It's like walking on eggshells, you know? He's trying to finish a book, the editor's always calling to nag him, so he's under too much pressure, so he gets so mad when I break things or make noise, I've been living on takeout ramen whenever we don't eat at a concert hall, and..." He sighed again. "And... Hiro... I mean... I... um... I can't, can I."

"Can't what?" Hiroshi said, and took a swig from a can of soda.

"I can't... I mean... I just... can't..." He stopped, and gulped hard, and said, "I can't be everything he needs, can I. I can't... have his child..."

Hiroshi sprayed a fountain of cola across the street, and spent a while clutching at a nearby lamp-post hacking and wheezing.

Shuichi gave him a half-lidded glare. "Oh, shut up, you moron."

"Me?" Hiroshi choked. "Shuichi no baka -- what, you think if he just screws you often enough, you'll get pregnant or something?"

With his cheeks stained as brilliant pink as his hair, Shuichi smacked him across the back of the head indignantly. "NO! I... I just... I mean... Sakano-san's got a family. Seguchi-san's got a family. Noriko-san's got a family. K-san's got a family. Everybody else has got a family. Yuki-san's got a family too, he just runs from them, but I... um... I wonder if sometimes that's why he... hurts so much. Because he needs a family. I mean... a child. I mean, he can yell and shout at me, but he wouldn't yell at a child like that, would he? Maybe he needs someone more... pure than me, someone who could just love, like a child, and... that's one thing I can't ever give him..."

Hiroshi bit back his first five or six responses to that while he was relearning how to breathe. Responses like _What do you mean he wouldn't yell at a child like that? If he can treat you like a piece of leftover chewing-gum he hasn't bothered to scrape off the sole of his shoe..._ and _Someone who'd love him more purely -- or irrationally -- than you? Shuichi, who do you think qualifies for that? Buddha?_

Finally, he managed to get a lungful of air that wasn't half adulterated with carbonated beverage, and said, "Look. There's nothing to do about what you can't give him, is there. Just start with the stuff you can give him, okay? Like not burning half the kitchen down while he's trying to concentrate..."

"That was an accident," Shuichi mumbled.

"...or losing him three chapters of revisions when his computer shuts down when you blow half the house's fuses trying to plug too many appliances into the same power strip..."

"...but I just wanted to bake him a cake to encourage him and..."

"Do it someplace else," Hiroshi suggested. "Then just take the cake home, done, baked, frosted, _not_ setting off the fire alarm, and _not_ blowing half the house's circuits. Then he gets to see the good parts and you get to hide the bad parts."

Shuichi was looking at him like he now held the solution to all of life's problems. "Hiro-kun, you're a genius! ...Where, though?"

Hiroshi was mentally kicking himself even as he heard his mouth saying, "You can try it at my place."

His mind was already filling up with clouds of black smoke, irate neighbors with sudden power outages, scorch marks on the walls, and howling landlords, as Shuichi said delightedly, "Sure! Thanks, Hiro!"

* * *

Yuki heard Hiroshi's motorcycle roar away, and silently braced himself for the inevitable incoming whirlwind of noise and commotion and hysteria... 

...except that it didn't come. And that was, in its own way, even harder to ignore. He heard the door squeak and a small anxious hiss of Shuichi's breath, and then, a few minutes later, a floorboard squeak, and then nothing.

He stared at the screen intently, trying just to get back to work... except that the sound of nothing was echoing louder than any normal tempest.

Finally, with a groan, Yuki pushed the screen of the laptop closed and stalked over to his door and slid it open. "Now what?"

Shuichi stood frozen in the middle of the living-room floor, obviously caught mid-tiptoe. His face and hair and clothes were streaked with black and white in approximately equal proportions -- it smelled like something had charred, and the white looked suspiciously like flour. Yuki shut his eyes briefly and rubbed at his temples, the other hand patting at a shirt pocket to see if he had any cigarettes left.

"I'm sorry," Shuichi said miserably.

"For what?"

"I... er... I didn't want to disturb you, I thought I wasn't making any noise..."

Yuki thought about this new and interesting revelation for a moment, then decided against explaining about the strangeness of the absence of noise, since it might discourage him from making future attempts at something lower than 120 decibels. Not for the first time, he wondered if Shuichi's constant high-volume lifestyle was due to his eardrums having been permanently damaged by the hours spent on stage surrounded by loud music.

Instead, he asked, "What happened to you this time?"

"Umm... there was... kind of a fire. At Hiroshi's place. Just a small one, but..."

"What, did you try to cook something again?"

Shuichi flinched. "I said I was sorry..."

"Never mind. Just get the soot off before you sit on anything." He walked back into his office and shut the door.

* * *

"No," K said. 

"But K-saaaaan!" Shuichi begged, clutching at his knees. "Hiro-kun says I can't bake at his place again or his neighbors will lynch him and even I know better than to ask Sakano-san right now and I really really want to bake Yuki-san a cake because he's almost done with his book and he's really tired and he needs something to cheer him up and--"

"I said _no,_" K said again, and thumbed loose the safety on the revolver shoved through the back of his belt.

* * *

"But Noriko-saaaaan..."

* * *

"But Tatsuha-saaaaan..."

* * *

Shuichi stared at the door to Seguchi Touma's office with a trembling hand raised to knock. And kept staring, for fifteen minutes, completely petrified between need and dread. Then, finally, defeated, he put his hand down and slunk away.

* * *

"Really? You mean it, Sakuma-san?" Shuichi's eyes took up about three quarters of his skull when they went all shimmery like that. Ryuichi wondered how he did it. 

"Really!" Ryuichi said. "But it has to be a carrot cake!"

"It does? ...why?"

"Kumagoro wants to help too," Ryuichi said earnestly. "Kumagoro wants to go on that cooking show. And of course Kumagoro only likes to bake carrot cakes; he's a rabbit, you know."

"But Yuki-san hates vegetables."

"Yuki-san hates anything that isn't beer and cigarettes, doesn't he?" Ryuichi asked.

Despondent, Shuichi said, "You might be right. And I'm not beer or cigarettes, am I..."

Ryuichi's brows crooked together. "That could be a problem."

* * *

Somewhere, Shuichi was melting something plastic with some horrible gear-disintegrating noises. And the rest of the week had been so amazingly quiet... Yuki groaned, thinking he should have known better than to hope it might last, and stalked out into the kitchen. 

"I'm sorry!" Shuichi said desperately. There was a cheap hand mixer smoking on the countertop, and a bowl full of something that smelled both scorched and fermented, and a combination of flour, egg shells, and... yes, beer foam... dripping from the counters.

"What in the hell do you think you're doing with that -- that -- what is that...?"

"I... I wanted to bake you a cake... but Sakuma-san said you hated everything that wasn't beer and cigarettes and I thought he might be right and a cigarette cake sounded like a really horrible idea and I know I heard somebody say something about beer batter once and -- and -- I'm sorry, Yuki --"

Yuki ran a hand down his face. "You were making me a beer cake."

Miserably, Shuichi nodded. "Except I didn't know when you use beer instead of water it doesn't mix right, I put the beaters in and it kind of exploded or something, maybe it's the fuzz like when you shake them, I don't know, but..."

"Listen to me," Yuki said. "Listen close. No beer cakes. Got it? No beer cakes. No beer cookies. No beer anything. Just stay the hell out of the kitchen, all right? The last thing I need right now is another remodeling crew. Just stay _out_ of the kitchen."

He stormed back into the office, shut the door, locked it, and tried not to think too hard about the smell of scorched beer that still perfumed the entire house for fear he might either strangle the brat or start laughing, and the last thing he needed to do was encourage the little fool to make _more_ life-and-sanity-shattering experiments with electric appliances. How he'd managed not to electrocute himself on Hiroshi's guitar and amps...

* * *

"Hiroo-ooo-ooo!" (hic) "Yuuuuki haaates me--" (sniffle choke) "--because I can't cook and I burn things and -- and -- and I'm not beer--!" 

_"What?"_

"I said--" (choke sniffle sob)

"Never mind," Hiroshi said, rubbing his temples, "I heard you the first time, I don't think I want to hear it again. Where are you now?"

* * *

"Just don't forget next time," Hiroshi said tiredly. "Just stay away from electricity for a while. Don't fry his computer. Don't burn down his kitchen. And don't repaint it with beer foam and cake mix either." 

"But -- but -- I wanted to bake him a cake...!"

"And we decided you needed to do that somewhere else, remember?"

"But nobody else would let me bake at their house!"

"Because we all know what happens when you set foot in a kitchen!" Hiroshi retorted.

"Hirooooo!" Shuichi sniffled at tears, with enormous tear-shimmery eyes wavering. "You're so mean..."

"Listen," Hiroshi said. "How about this. We go buy a cake--"

"But I want to make it myself!"

"--We _go buy a cake,_" Hiroshi repeated, "a _white_ cake. And we go buy some colored frosting. And you decorate it. So you made him a cake and nothing gets burned or short-circuited or bled on..."

"Really?" Shuichi scrubbed at his tear-streaked face, and said, "He won't mind that I didn't bake it myself...?"

Hiroshi bit back the first response of _He'll be grateful you didn't bake it yourself, if he's got any taste buds left after the chain-smoking,_ and said instead, "Trust me."

* * *

"Hirooooooo--! The strawberry flavor spilled all over and I tried to erase it but it just -- " 

Face in one hand, Hiroshi said, "Shuichi, I _told_ you you can't erase frosting!"

* * *

Tonight, when the door creaked cautiously open, a staggeringly strong scent of strawberry food flavoring came drifting in after it. Yuki shoved the laptop back and buried his face in both crossed arms on the desk. 

_Not tonight. Please, God, not tonight, I haven't got the patience left to deal with some new disaster right now..._

A few minutes later, there were water sounds and splashing sounds coming from the bathroom.

_I think I can trust him to wash himself without drowning himself in the process. Can't I? Please, God..._

* * *

"No wonder Yuki hates me," Shuichi said, miserable. "Not only am I not beer, I can't even make him a cake..." 

"Look," Hiroshi said. "You're a rock star, not a chef. So why are you trying to be a chef? If you want to give him something, give him something you're good at. Write a song for him."

_And even you can't burn down or short-circuit part of his house while you're writing music, Shu-chan. Or else I've been underestimating your powers of chaos for half our lives... _

_I hope I haven't been underestimating your powers of chaos for half our lives..._

"I'll screw that up too," Shuichi said. "I screw up everything, don't I?"

"Not everything," Hiroshi said. "You're very good at being my best friend, you know? And a couple million people think you're very good at singing." _And you're very good at loving that sour-faced ingrate who doesn't appreciate how much you care about him. But I can't say that to you, can I._

"But Yuki says I've got no talent at lyrics..."

"So write something instrumental. I'll help you play it."

The next thing he knew, Shuichi was hugging him until his ribs creaked. "Hiroooooo--! You're a genius...! You could have been a doctor no problem, you know--"

Half laughing and half wheezing, Hiroshi rumpled Shuichi's unkempt thatch of shaggy pink hair. "But then who'd be the guitarist for the next great legend of rock?"

"Damn straight! You know, that'd be a great ad campaign--" Shuichi hopped on top of Hiroshi's desk and started posing. "Bad Luck: The next great--"

"Shuichi, the desk--!"

"Hiro! I'm trying to be inspired here!" He tapped a foot against the top of the desk and rubbed his chin. "The next great legend of--"

The desk's makeshift leg decided it was tired of Shuichi's antics, and toppled out from under the desk. The desk followed it down. Finally, as if startled by the reminder of the existence of gravity, Shuichi landed in the middle of the entire mess.

From somewhere in the middle of the pile of debris, there came a heartfelt wail of misery. "Hiroooooooo! I'm such a complete disaster... no wonder Yuki hates me..."

Hiroshi reached over and started gingerly extracting broken pieces of wood. "Look," he said, "let's just write up a checklist. Things to do. Things _not_ to do. Like not standing on a desk whose broken leg is propped up by three old textbooks. Right? Let's just make a list..."

* * *

Somewhat battered and the worse for wear, but very determined, Shuichi sat down very carefully on Yuki's sofa and thumbed over another page in the notebook, written out by Shuichi under Hiroshi's determined supervision, with a couple of margin notes in Hiroshi's hand. 

> _23. Don't walk in front of cars when going across street._
> 
> _24. Don't shout 'Tadaima!' at top of lungs and go flip on TV. Go put on Walkman instead._
> 
> _24b. Don't sing along with Walkman either._
> 
> _25. Don't go into kitchen. See also 7, 13, and 19._
> 
> _26. Don't jump on furniture._
> 
> _26b. Don't dance on furniture._
> 
> _26c. Don't drum on furniture._
> 
> _26d. Don't do anything else on furniture for which furniture was not designed._
> 
> _27. Laundry. Just one scoop of laundry soap, not whole box._
> 
> _28. No more beer cakes. See also 7, 13, 19, and 25. _(Hiroshi had marked this one_ IMPORTANT POINT, SHUICHI.)_
> 
> _29. Avoid electrical appliances when possible._

"Jeez, Hiro," Shuichi mumbled, "what can I do?" Then he reflexively clamped a hand over his mouth, and mumbled, "Sorry..." 

There were no snarling sounds from the office, so Shuichi decided it must not have been a major transgression; he breathed a sigh of relief and flipped another page. They were mostly don'ts too.

With a sigh, he flipped back to the front of the notebook, where Hiroshi had listed the top three in big letters.

> _How not to bother Yuki while he's writing._
> 
> _1. Don't destroy, electrocute, burn, disfigure, or maim anything, including yourself, for as  
long as you can manage._
> 
> _2. Don't make noise for as long as you can manage._
> 
> _3. Try to be quiet and inconspicuous when you do end up destroying, electrocuting,  
burning, disfiguring, or maiming things, including yourself._

He'd complained that those were too vague and didn't give him any actual guidance on why not to go into the kitchen, so Hiroshi had made up the next 57 rules on the spot. But more and more they were just looking like variations on the first three. 

Shuichi flopped over on the sofa and looked around the large and rather empty room for something to do. --Correction. Something _quiet and non-breakable_ to do.

The last time he'd gotten this many lectures on how to behave, he'd been in a library. Maybe that was it, maybe something about books just rubbed off on people like that; maybe that was why Yuki was so cranky about noise, that librarian had been too...

Library.

Books.

Books were _very_ quiet.

And Yuki wrote them, too.

Shuichi sat bolt upright, as though he'd just been hit by a lightning bolt.

_Yuki_ wrote books. He could go read some of Yuki's books. There had to be some of Yuki's books around, didn't there?

It didn't take all that long to search the bookshelves in the living room, because there weren't any bookshelves in the living room. Or in the bedroom. Or anywhere else. Shuichi sat down on the sofa again and thought about this.

_Why does someone who writes books not keep them around? Doesn't he like his own books?_

But then... they weren't cigarettes or beer. Sakuma-san's offhand analysis seemed to be getting more and more unwilling reinforcement all the time...

Well, if there weren't any of Yuki's books here, he'd have to go to where Yuki's books were.

"I'm going to the library!" Shuichi called without thinking about it, and scooped up his notebook and his jacket and ran out, the front door banging shut behind him.

Two seconds later, the office door slammed open, and Yuki stood wild-eyed in the doorway, staring after him. "_You're_ going to the _WHAT?_"

After a few minutes of silence, Yuki thought, _Auditory hallucination, maybe? I've been shut up in that room with my own imagination for so many weeks now..._

Still, tense from some unease he didn't know how to name, he sighed and turned around and headed back to his desk.

A minute later, he went to the kitchen, grabbed a beer, and headed back to his desk. _God, I've got to get this thing written before I completely lose my mind..._


	2. Shuichi and the Library

**The Eye of the Beholder part 2:** Shuichi and the Library 

Shuichi had to stop at the police box and ask directions, twice, but eventually he found his way to the library...

...which had ENTIRELY too many books.

"How am I supposed to find _anything_ in here?" Shuichi wailed, and then jumped when three stern-faced women immediately made hushing sounds, like rattlesnakes that might bite if he stepped the wrong way again. One of them came over and caught him by the jacket sleeve and dragged him over to a computer screen.

"Use the card catalog," she said, and hurried back to her tall and rather wobbly-looking stack of folders.

Shuichi looked at the computer. It didn't look like it had anything to do with cards. But there was a line that said "Type your question here."

Shuichi thought about that one for a long moment. What was his question really? _Why doesn't Yuki have any of his own books around the house? _or _Why doesn't Yuki like noise any more than these people do?_ or _Why am I such a disaster?_

He thought the first one would be easiest for the computer, so he started by typing in, "Why doesn't Yuki have any of his own books around the house?"

The computer thought about it for a minute, then came back with a list of 3,024 books and articles to read for the answer.

"_What?_" Shuichi said, then flinched again at more hisses. "Sorry! Sorry..."

He went back to looking at the list. But none of the books in the first screen were even by Yuki. Some of them were kids' books on "why did it snow at Grandma's house."

Shuichi glared at the computer, and erased the first question, and typed, "Forget the snow. Just tell me about Yuki Eiri, all right?"

The computer beeped at him, and said it couldn't find anything that matched those terms.

Shuichi sighed, and decided he'd better use really simple words for this obviously stupid machine. He erased the question again, and typed very slowly and carefully, "Tell me about Yuki Eiri."

The computer promptly returned one article entitled "Tell me about: Yuki Eiri." It was a popular magazine interview from a couple of years ago.

"That's more like it!" Shuichi said, and then stared at the complicated series of numbers after it. "All right, what does that mean?"

He typed that in, and the computer promptly erased his article information and replaced it with 265 completely irrelevant references to something else entirely.

"No!" Shuichi protested, clutching at the screen. "Give it back!"

A woman with a rather pained expression on her face and an official-looking nametag came over and said, "Can I help you?"

Shuichi turned around and looked up at his newfound angel, and said, "Yes! Tell me how to get this machine to tell me where to find out everything about Yuki Eiri!"

"All right," she said, with the corner of her mouth twitching. "You just had something that you liked?"

"Almost. It had numbers. I just wanted to know what the numbers meant so I asked it and it went--" He stopped short, staring, because she'd just clicked one button and suddenly his article was back. "Thank you! Thank you thank you thank you--"

Smiling, she held up both hands. "Don't worry about it. It's my job."

"Really?" He blinked. "You know everything about Yuki Eiri?"

"No, not me personally. It's my job to know how to find what you want to know. --My name's Horikawa. What's yours?"

"Shindou Shuichi," Shuichi said delightedly. "I'm in Bad Luck."

"No, not anymore, Shuichi-kun," she said, puzzled. "It just takes some practice to learn how to ask the computer..."

Shuichi blinked at her. "No, I mean I'm in Bad Luck. The band."

"Oh. Teenagers' music? That's nice, dear." She patted his head. "I suppose that explains the unusual hair color, then. So you'd like help finding this article?"

Shuichi was a little nonplussed to discover that not everyone in the world knew Bad Luck yet. Maybe he'd have to come back here with Hiro-kun and Fujisaki-kun and initiate them to the wonders of the next great legend of rock (Hiro really had something there). In the meantime, he still had to find out about Yuki, so he nodded vigorously. "And everything else too!"

"Everything?" Horikawa said, blinking. "About him, or everything he's written, or...?"

"Both," Shuichi said. "Everything. Like why he doesn't keep his own books around the house and why he doesn't like noise and why he doesn't like it when I try to make him beer cakes and things like that. And if you can tell me why I'm a disaster in a kitchen I'd be grateful too but that just seems to be a fact, I guess there's no need to talk about 'why' when it's just an 'is'..."

"You know Yuki-sensei?"

A little shyly, Shuichi nodded. "I love him..."

"Doesn't everyone?" Horikawa said with a wistful sigh. "Come on, Shuichi-kun."

Shuichi thought about correcting her, then shrugged and smiled to himself. _I mean, she's right, isn't she? Everyone loves Yuki... except Yuki himself. I wonder why that is? Maybe the magazine will tell me; he never talks to me about anything like that, but he has to have talked to someone who interviewed him. --Maybe I could interview him. I should learn how to write interviews..._

Horikawa-san found him lots of magazines to read and sat him down at a desk with them, and a dictionary in case some of the kanji in the literary-type magazines were too complicated without furigana.

"Doesn't this place have his books too?"

"Yes, dear, but they'd take too long to read today. You don't have a library card, do you?"

"A what?"

"A library card, dear. To check them out and take them home."

Shuichi thought about the last time he'd been at a library. He'd been about six, and he mostly remembered a lot of very tall people constantly going 'shush' or chasing him or getting ladders to pry him off the tops of the bookshelves. But the world had looked a lot more interesting from up there; you could see past all the books. On the ground all you could see were rows and rows of books; from the top you could see down to where other people were.

He didn't actually remember taking any of the books home... he remembered being firmly escorted out the door, but he didn't remember holding any books when someone pushed him through the door.

"...I guess not."

"Come back tomorrow," she said, "and bring a picture ID, and we can get you a library card. Just stay here while you look at these for today, okay? I'll come check on you in a bit and see if there's anything else you need."

"Thank you, Horikawa-sensei!"

"No problem!" she said, smiling. "And... Shuichi-kun... were you serious about a beer cake...? Why on earth...?"

"I don't know. I thought it was a good idea, but nobody else did."

"That... er... yes. Well. We have cookbooks too, when you come back. With lots of pictures of what to do, and, er, what _not_ to do..."

* * *

The Yuki he read about in the magazines was impossible. The Yuki in the magazines was chatty and warm and vivid and charming, and talked sagely about prose structure and poetry structure and fusing the two, and the philosophy of the writer's craft, and how to merge the demands of the market with the demands of art, and he was completely _not_ the Yuki who stalked silently around the house with a can of beer or a cigarette and almost never spoke above a grumble. 

And he smiled at the cameras, but his eyes were strange. Bright and shining -- and reflecting everything at the surface.

When Shuichi looked into Yuki's eyes, he saw depths there, and shadows, and occasionally a glimmer of something moving behind the shadows, but his eyes so rarely smiled that it was a precious treasure when he saw it. These eyes that stared into the cameras' lenses were all glitter on the surface, and he couldn't see anything at all underneath. What was Yuki _doing_ to these interviewers?

Some of the articles were from before they'd met, about Yuki and a string of girlfriends who rarely seemed to last more than one big media event. And then there were splashy trashy distorted sensationalist pieces about Yuki and various girlfriends -- and Shuichi himself. And speculating about... about things they had no business speculating about. Shuichi hastily shoved them down into the pile.

It was like there was a different Yuki in every article. Sometimes he was abstracted and intellectual and used really complicated words about words, and sometimes he was wistful and romantic and even tender... and Shuichi thought more than once he must have been flirting with the interviewer, for the story to come out sounding that gushy. He decided he was mad at those interviewers, for no particular reason other than that Yuki had been charming with them. Yuki had said things to them he'd never said to Shuichi.

But he'd been saying those things with those bright mirror-shallow eyes, and Shuichi wondered what he would do if Yuki ever did talk to him like that. Whether he'd be delighted, or whether he'd be heartbroken...

...because really, they weren't talking to Yuki at all. Not the person he was every day, not the person who woke up with his hair rumpled and his sheets tangled, who always drank black coffee for breakfast and smoked a cigarette while he read the paper. They were talking to someone Yuki had made up to be interviewed. He was a writer, wasn't he? He kept other characters, other _people_, living in his mind. If he gave those other people to the interviewers...

Why would he do that, though? Didn't he want people to know the truth?

But then, he always wrote fiction...

One of the interviewers seemed like she had actually read his books. The others all talked about media events or generalities or the novelist's market in general; this one talked about his books, and events in his books. Shuichi read it a lot more carefully.

> _Q: What I find most intriguing about your works, Yuki-sensei, is that you don't end the stories where most people would. You distract us from that -- the prose is beautiful, almost fragile, like an image captured in acid-washed crystal, or rain-wet shadows of autumn leaves -- but you never end the story where most of us expect._
> 
> _Yuki: Where most romance novelists would end it, you mean?_
> 
> _Q: Yes, I suppose so. You never give your characters a happily-ever-after. The point where they're happiest is somewhere in the middle, but then events keep happening to them after that. Sometimes I almost don't want to read through to the ends; I'm sorry._
> 
> _Yuki: Don't be. My business is giving people their fantasies; if you want to stop in the middle and imagine a happily-ever-after, I won't object. You can find in my books what you want to find -- something that makes you happy while you read them._
> 
> _Q: But that's not what you write._
> 
> _Yuki: People don't really want to read about someone whose life is perfect in ways they can never have. People want to read about things that their life could be. Taking backgrounds from some old archetypes, because fairy tales are novels at their simplest -- Cinderella will always be more popular than Sleeping Beauty, because almost nobody was born a princess. Cinderella becomes what the reader wants; Sleeping Beauty just is, and there's nothing anyone could do to become her. And who would want to? She spends a hundred years not moving, waiting for someone else to come and change her life. _
> 
> _...But again, there's nothing worth writing about the time after Cinderella's happily ever after, because that's not how the world is. If you're not changing, you're dead. So, as my shallow fiction-warped gesture at something that looks like integrity -- it's never the same as it was when they thought they had their fairytale ending. Because it has to reflect enough of this world to satisfy what you need, rather than just what you want. _
> 
> _Q: But sometimes they're happy at the end too, aren't they? Those are the ones I like best..._
> 
> _Yuki: Like I said, I'm in the business of giving people their fantasies. And people wouldn't keep reading my books if they always knew how they were going to end._
> 
> _Q: So you're saying that it just has to change. Sometimes they're sad, sometimes they're still happy, just in a different way... it just has to change, like the world._
> 
> _Yuki: There are limits on my imagination. No matter what, life always goes on. Sometimes that's all that keeps you going, that life will be different later; and sometimes you hate that time will take away anything you think you can hold. _
> 
> _...I'm a professional liar, in a way; but more than that, I'm a professional crafter of small sculpted pieces of this world. Even I can't lie that convincingly. There is no such thing as a happily-ever-after -- just a happily-for-a-while._

"Oh, Yuki," Shuichi whispered, and then shoved his chair back and scooped up his jacket and ran.

* * *

_"YUUUUUUKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII--!"_

_Oh, God, now what..._

Yuki barely had time to save his latest draft and push his chair back before Shuichi crashed in through the office door and flung himself into Yuki's arms sobbing.

"Yuuuukiiii! It's so sad -- why is it so sad? I don't want it to be like that --"

Resignedly, Yuki ran down a quick mental checklist. _Nothing smells melted or burned, can't be the kitchen; he doesn't drive, can't have hit an animal. He doesn't have a pet so it can't have gotten hit. He doesn't have a fish so it can't be floating on the top of a tank somewhere. He writes all the lyrics for Bad Luck so it can't be some tragedy song he didn't know about. Back to the drawing board._

"What are you on about this time?"

"I -- I know -- there can't really be a happily forever, but -- it can be a really really long time, can't it? I promise. It can be happily for a really really long time. So you don't have to worry about that, okay? So can you try not to be so sad?"

After a moment, Yuki said, "And something has changed this fundamental fact of the universe in the past five minutes?"

"Horikawa-sensei at the library gave me all these articles about you and one of them was really really sad and you said you didn't think there was a happily ever after. And that's so sad. And I think -- I guess you're not wrong, not really, but the happily for a while can really be a long while -- I promise -- I really do --"

"You believed something you read in a magazine?" Yuki said tiredly. "You're a media target yourself. Haven't you had enough absolute nonsense written about you to take it all with a grain of salt already?"

"But this one was different," Shuichi said. "I mean, the rest of them sounded like they were talking to some Ultra Mega Weird Space Alien from like Outer Space or something and it just borrowed your head for taking pictures of, but anyway that... that really sounded like you, and..."

"Moron." Yuki ruffled Shuichi's hair despite himself. "I don't write science fiction. The ones from Imagine and Neotype were talking to Hirano Komori; the ones from Kadokawa Sunday, Vision, and Asahiya Mainichi were talking to Shitada Jun. Not a space alien in the lot. So which one were you panicking over?"

Shuichi blinked at him, sniffling. ''...Who are they? Hirano-san and Shitada-san..."

"Fictional characters," Yuki growled. "From my books. I write books. Remember?" He reached back and pulled one at random off the desk and bonked Shuichi on the head with it lightly. "Books. Paper. Fiction."

"But why do you lie to them...? When... when people ask about you..."

"That's my job," Yuki said. "I lie to people for three hundred pages at a time, and they pay me for it."

Shuichi gulped back the last of the tears, rubbing his face. "But... that's not right. I mean... people go to my concerts to see _me_. People read interviews to read about _you_..."

"People don't want to know about a middle-aged chain-smoking alcoholic recluse," Yuki said tiredly. "They want fantasy. My publishers pay me to feed their fantasies. I oblige, since I have a good enough imagination to make it more interesting than the truth. And they send me money and _leave me alone_ to go write the next book."

"L-leave... _oh!_" Shuichi went stiff. "I'm sorry! I forgot... I... er... I'll go..." He blinked at more tears. "And I was trying so hard to be good..."

Yuki sighed, and ruffled his hair again. "You have been," he said, "except for the hangover-from-hell cake. Never mind. Just let me get through this edit and the signings next week, and then you can have me back for a while. Until it comes back from the editors. Okay?"

Shuichi nodded, and reached up to take the book Yuki had bonked him with. "Is this one of yours? So you do have them after all..."

"Don't read that one," Yuki said, and took it back.

"Why not?"

"You wouldn't like the ending." He turned around, ran a fingertip lightly across the shelf, and pulled out another one instead. "If you want, here. But I can't imagine you sitting still long enough to read it. --Don't you have music to be writing or something?"

"Well, yeah, but it's hard to write music without singing it..."

"Go ahead and sing," Yuki said. "Just no mikes and gigawatt speakers."

"Really? ...it wouldn't bother you?"

"If it bothers me," Yuki said dryly, "trust me, you'll be the first to hear about it."

Sheepishly, Shuichi nodded, and picked up the book and himself and crept, elaborately quiet, toward the door. But he hesitated in the doorway.

"Yuki?"

"Hmm?"

"It really can be happily for a long time, you know."

Silently, Yuki got up and walked toward him; Shuichi flinched reflexively.

"Sorry! Sorry, I'm going now--" He put a hand on the door to shut it.

Yuki caught the door short, and drew Shuichi close enough to kiss for a long silent moment. When he finally let him go again, Shuichi slid down the doorframe, pink-cheeked and gasping.

"Y-yu-yuki... uh... um..."

"For God's sake," Yuki said, "I'm a novelist. You don't think I could ignore a lead-in line like that, do you? Go write your song."

* * *

"_Hiiiiiroooooooooo!_" 

Wincing and holding the handset away from his ear, Hiroshi asked, "Now what?"

"Yuuukiiii looooves meeeeee....!"

"He'd be an idiot not to, wouldn't he?" Hiroshi said, both indulgent and exasperated. "What about those  
songs?"

"Oh yeah! No problem. I'll go write some..." (click)

Shaking his head in bemusement, Hiroshi hung up again.

* * *

Frankly, Hiroshi liked it better when Shuichi was in one of his "slightly less sure Yuki loved him" moods. 

"Yuki hates me" mostly produced cascades of tears and no music, so that was bad, but "I think he loves me" produced some interestingly wistful stuff and some high-energy "hey we're perky and enthusiastic, what's not to love" stuff.

Unadulterated "Yuki loves me" produced tooth-rotting sugar-silliness. With horrible cliched lovey-dovey rhymes. If this kind of thing was what had blown into Yuki's hands that first night, Hiro could almost forgive him for the attitude. Almost. Hiroshi tried to think of a more tactful approach than the one Yuki had taken, though.

"This one's all about Yuki, right?"

"You can tell, huh?"

Hiroshi bit back the _Gee, I think the fifty-foot neon signs kind of got the point across,_ and said, "I like the melody. Are you sure you want to put lyrics to it at all? Or do you want this one to be the one you give him as an instrumental?"

Shuichi's eyes widened. "I'd completely forgotten about that! Thanks, Hiro!"

_Saved._ Hiroshi produced a grin, and said, "Any time." _I wonder if I can get that line to work more than once..._

* * *

Shuichi kept headphones plugged into the portable keyboard he'd put on the living room table, because if it was going to be a surprise for Yuki, then he didn't want Yuki hearing it eighty-five times before he gave it to him. But now that he could work from their house through the days too, he was noticing something that worried him. 

Yuki slept a little every night, but lately he got up at dawn to go work some more. Shuichi had been assuming he slept more while the house was empty. But he didn't seem to be doing that anywhere near as often as he ought to. Or eating either. And Shuichi was fairly sure that living on beer, black coffee, and cigarettes for more than a couple of days wasn't a good idea for anyone. Especially someone on medication.

He wasn't sure what it was Yuki took to keep his fever and the coughing under control, but beer was probably not high on the list of good things to take it with, not to mention the cigarettes. Except that Shuichi remembered he really shouldn't go into the kitchen to try to do something about it either because he'd probably completely accidentally blow something up if he did...

Shuichi paced around the keyboard for a while, thinking. It would have to be subtle, or Yuki would growl at him. Going in and tying his wrists to the rolling chair with his necktie and kidnapping him to some restaurant that served people who were tied up in desk chairs was not subtle, for example.

And Yuki hated takeout ramen, with or without beer.

What went with beer and cigarettes naturally?

Shuichi brightened. _Americans!_ Americans did beer and cigarettes all the time. Yuki had spent a while in America. Maybe that was where he'd learned it. American food... hot dogs, fried chicken, pizza... all of which went with beer...

Americans were not subtle either. Hmm.

Well, Americans were more subtle than the necktie-and-rolling-desk-chair approach. He could improve on the theory after some practice.

Shuichi ran and grabbed the phone book and started paging through it.

* * *

"_What_ is that smell?" Yuki asked from the doorway of his office, coughing a little and waving a hand in front of his face to try to ward off the scent wafting out of the cardboard box. 

Delighted with the success of his attempt at extracting Yuki from behind the desk, Shuichi said, "Pizza! With calamari and corn and asparagus and I think those used to be pineapple, I'm not sure, it's hard to tell with the squid ink sauce..."

"Jesus H. Christ on a stick. Only in Japan..." Yuki turned back toward his desk.

"Oh no you don't!" Shuichi tackled him around the knees. "You came out here; you're going to eat something that isn't beer! Americans eat pizza with beer all the time. So you can too..."

One eyebrow twitching, Yuki said, "Americans do not eat pizza like _that._"

"But they said it was Hawaiian style! Okay, so you've been to New York, maybe it's different there. But they promised me this was Hawaiian style seafood pizza, it's got pineapple and everything..." Shuichi looked up at him with every ounce of pleading he could muster. "And you're coughing again. Haven't you been taking your medicine?"

"It dulls my mind too much. I don't have time to be sitting around in a fog. ...And whether you believe it or not, that is _not_ Ha-"

Shuichi scrambled up his pants leg like an overambitious kitten and rested the back of his hand against Yuki's forehead. "And your temperature's too high too. You sit down and eat dinner and I'm going to go find your medicine and..."

Yuki extracted him by the scruff of the neck and held him dangling midair at arm's length.

"Look," he said sourly, "let's make a bargain here. You _don't_ make me eat that -- _substance_ -- and I'll go take my medicine and eat dinner and whatever else you like. Deal?"

Shuichi blinked a couple of times.

_Well, this isn't quite how I imagined it going, but I suppose it got me there anyway. Good enough. Remember to add to the notebook: Hawaiian-style pizza has kick-ass powers of Yuki-persuasion... _

"Sure thing!" he said happily, and sat down in front of the pizza box.

Watching him, Yuki said faintly, "You're actually going to put that _into your mouth_, aren't you. --On _purpose_."

Already chewing on a slice, Shuichi gulped hastily and nodded. "I like pineapple."

"I think I'm going to be ill."

"I know!" Shuichi said, and took another bite of pizza. "I keep telling you the doctor said to take your medicine every day, not just when you remember it!"

"Never mind..."


	3. The Persuasive Power of Attack Pizza

**The Eye of the Beholder 3:** The Persuasive Power of Attack Pizza 

By the end of Bad Luck's second week around Tokyo, Shuichi felt like it was turning into a routine he liked. A routine that didn't involve aggressive and foul-tempered kitchen appliances either.

He went to the rehearsal studio with Hiro and Fujisaki and Sakano every day, and Fujisaki kicked around the melodies and the lyrics, and Shuichi kicked around Fujisaki for criticizing his lyrics, and then they took a break for dinner, and Shuichi found something to pick up and bring home, and he could usually whine at Yuki until Yuki ate it to shut him up.

Sometimes he went back out for later rehearsals or local performances, or to watch Ryuichi and the others; usually Yuki was still staring at his computer screen when he got back, so he would chase Yuki into pajamas and bed with a threat of leftover pizza from some state or another. Yuki seemed to be even more afraid of the leftovers than of the originals. But Shuichi knew he'd heard someone talk about eating cold pizza for breakfast and didn't see why the principle couldn't apply here. In any case, Shuichi wasn't about to let a perfectly good leverage point slide.

"California" pizza involved avocado, nori, mayonnaise, and fungus that looked like it originated from Mars, and Yuki must not have been taking his medicine correctly because he was obviously still having fever-chills. He shuddered any time his eyes focused on the box.

Shuichi grabbed a blanket and plonked himself down in Yuki's lap and started explaining again about the medicine, and Yuki pinched his nose shut to stop him talking.

"...Mou. You could have kissed me again or something."

"You've been putting _that_ in your mouth. No thank you."

Shuichi looked up at him with anxious eyes. "Was America that horrible?"

After a long minute, Yuki said, "Never mind." But he didn't shove Shuichi out of his lap, so Shuichi took the opportunity to snuggle.

"Don't get too comfortable."

"Aren't you done with the book?"

"The story is done, but I still have to finish editing it by tomorrow morning."

"That's what editors are for," Shuichi said happily. "Throw it in the mail, we can go to the park tomorrow or something..."

"That is _not_ what editors are for," Yuki said.

"Then why do they call them editors?"

"How do you like it when Fujisaki rewrites your songs for you?"

Shuichi shut his mouth for a minute, and then said finally, "All right, you win. It's just... you look so tired, but you hardly take time to sleep, and I'm sure you're not taking the medicine often enough, and..." He sighed. "At least it'll be over after tomorrow."

"Sorry," Yuki said, softly. "The reason I have to have the edits done tomorrow morning is that I head into the media feeding frenzy at noon."

"Feeding frenzy...?"

"Book signings, libraries, schools, publicity events, celebrity fundraisers... I wrote it into my contract that they only get me two weeks a season, but they do get me for two weeks. ...And after that I want to sleep for a day straight. So, in two weeks and a day, I'm yours. I  
do remember I promised that."

"Can I come with you?"

Yuki blinked. Then he laughed.

"I'm serious!" Shuichi protested. "It sounds like you'd hate it, so I want to be there for you..."

"There's no point in both of us being completely bored out of our minds," Yuki said.

"But..."

"Book stores," Yuki said. "And libraries. And schools. All full of people who go shush and have no appreciation for loud music with electric guitars. What would you do but go stir-crazy?"

"What do you do?"

"I sit and smile for ten or twelve hours, and sign anything that gets put in front of me, and listen to complete strangers ramble on about anything they want to ramble on about." The way he said it made it sound like oral surgery without anesthetics.

"But... they're your fans."

"No," Yuki said, and sighed. "Shuichi-kun... the people who come to see you are your fans. Without you, Bad Luck is nothing -- without your energy, without your life, without your breath and body and your voice singing the words in your soul -- without you, there is nothing for Bad Luck to be. People who go to concerts want to see the singer. Without the musicians, there is no music."

"Without you there wouldn't be any books..."

"No," Yuki said. "Because if I'd had any kind of foresight when I signed the contract, I'd have sat some model in my place for the book jacket photos and sent him on the publicity tours instead. The people who read my books don't want me -- just my words, tidily laid out on a dead sheet of paper. It could be anyone's body sitting in that chair signing those things and smiling for them. You see? I'm only there to give them a piece of fantasy, because all the art has already gone into the book and all that's left for me to do is a bit of media hype. And if they wanted the truth, they wouldn't be reading fiction, would they."

"But it's your dreams they want," Shuichi said. "They want to touch the world you dreamed for them--" Then he stopped.

Yuki nodded quietly. "They want to touch a world that isn't real. The reality is me sitting here living on coffee and beer for two months staring into my computer. There's no romance in that. So I give them what they want instead. I give them what they paid me for. I sit and I smile and I give them snippets of poetry in the voice of some smoky-voiced and completely fictional character... and they don't see me any more than thirty seconds, so it's fine if I can't keep it up beyond a few sentences. I'm paid to lie. This is no different. It's just more tiring to do it in person, and more tiring to deal with the handful of them who do actually want something more."

Shuichi thought about it for a minute, then reached over and grabbed Yuki's book off the table and handed it back to him.

"Took too much sitting after all?" Yuki guessed dryly.

"No," Shuichi said, with sober eyes. "I don't want just your dreams. I want _you_. I want the reality. All of it. So if these are just bought-and-paid-for lies to you, then I don't want them..." Sniffling a little, he added, "Why do you do it, then? I mean... I sing because there's nothing else I want to do more than singing; why do you do this if you don't love it?"

"Love is for amateurs," Yuki said with a sigh. "Amateurs can just do what they love when they want to do it, and when they have a bad day they go away and do something else. Because all they have from it is love. Professionals do it for money, on someone else's schedule and requirements. I write because I seem to be good at it, and because it's a job that doesn't involve having to stand and smile at the public eight hours a day. I write because it lets me make my own world, where people do what they're supposed to do and it makes a pretty and tidy picture, unlike this world. But love... An amateur is your girlfriend, sincere and a little clumsy. A professional is a whore who earns the money through skills that have been practiced and paid for."

"_YUUUUKIIIIIIII--!_" Shuichi twisted around, buried his face in Yuki's shoulder, and started soaking his shirt with fountains of tears. "That's... that's so cold..."

Rueful, Yuki stroked the back of Shuichi's hair, and wondered where he got all the tears from. "You're such a child," he murmured.

* * *

Shuichi decided that the least he could do was stay up and sit with Yuki while he was finishing his editing. And he wasn't about to be dissuaded by growls or glares or sulking. 

"What are you going to do but sit there and stare at me?"

"I don't know."

"I don't write for an audience."

"I don't care."

Yuki went back to his computer screen, and Shuichi sat and watched him.

After about ten minutes of it, Yuki silently stood up, picked up Shuichi by a handful of shirtcollar at the back of his neck, carried him out to the living room, and deposited him in front of the television.

"If you're determined to sit up all night, do it out here," Yuki said, and went back into the office and shut the door.

Shuichi sighed, and plugged his headphones into the keyboard's jack and loaded what he'd saved of the arrangement of Yuki's song.

* * *

When his nose hit the keyboard at three A. M. with a horrible noise, Shuichi startled himself awake; he sighed and shut the keyboard off, and took the headphones off. 

And then he could hear Yuki coughing.

"_Yuki!_" Shuichi ran headlong into the office, where Yuki was leaning on the desk trying to breathe; it kicked his panic switch into high gear. "What do I do? Should I call a doctor? Where's your medicine? When did you take it last? Wait, I fed it to you at dinner. Would it be bad to take it again? What's wrong? What do I _do?_"

With his breath dragging in his lungs, Yuki rasped, "Water...?"

"--Oh! Right! Stay here... wait, I'm not supposed to go in the -- oh, never _mind_ --"

Three seconds later, he was back with a glass of water he'd spilled more than half of on the way back, and tried to pour it down Yuki's face; Yuki growled at him, took the glass away, and sipped at it carefully.

Gradually, he could breathe again without the air choking or rasping in his lungs; anxious, Shuichi rubbed his shoulders, and started on the questions again.

"Should I call a doctor? Can you take your medicine again yet? What's wrong? What should I..."

Yuki set a fingertip to Shuichi's lips lightly, with a careful sigh. "Just too damn tired."

"Then go to sleep!"

"Haven't finished the last two..."

"You wrote it," Shuichi said. "It's got to be beautiful. Call it done and go to sleep."

"Moron." Yuki took another careful breath. "It's beautiful after I edit it, _because_ I edit it. You should try it some time."

"I'm Shindou Shuichi, genius vocalist of Bad Luck, the next great legend of rock," Shuichi said tearfully. "I don't need to edit. Neither do you. Go to sleep."

"Amateur," Yuki said, and ruffled his hair. "Two more chapters."

"Go to sleep and I'll edit them for you."

"Like hell you will," Yuki growled, and shoved him off his lap.

Shuichi started pacing around the room. "Should I get your medicine anyway? How often can you take it? Or maybe some hot tea. And honey. My mom used to make me hot tea and honey when I had a cough... but that would mean the kitchen... what should I do?"

"You should sit down and shut up!"

Shuichi dropped to a seat on the floor hastily, and clamped both hands over his mouth.

Yuki still coughed sometimes, small fretful choking when the air caught and curdled in his lungs; each time he did, Shuichi crept a little closer out of anxiety, until he found himself resting his head against Yuki's knee.

Yuki reached down with one hand and rumpled his hair; the other was still busy on the keyboard. Then he froze, struggling not to start coughing again.

"I can make tea," Shuichi said. "I'm not that incompetent. Do you want some tea and honey?"

"...Thank you."

Glowing, Shuichi picked himself up and half-flew into the kitchen.

Mostly, Shuichi knew he could make tea because the coffeemaker made hot water, which meant he didn't have to deal with the stove, but still it was something he could do that wouldn't burn the kitchen down. He went digging through the cupboards for tea, tossing things over his shoulder that weren't tea; then he crawled up on the countertop to be able to dig further back, because most of what Yuki kept around was coffee. Finally he came up with a canister of tea and the honey jar, and turned around and hopped down...

...and something burst, and then made scattering sounds.

Shuichi looked down at the remnants of a bag of coffee beans under his foot, sighed, and kicked them out of the way while he crunched his way over to the coffeemaker to get cups and a tray.

* * *

The sky was starting to lighten in the east when Yuki finally reached over, put a stack of paper in the printer, and shoved his chair back with a heartfelt groan. 

"And if the damn thing jams halfway through I'm feeding it to the sales rep..."

Blearily, Shuichi blinked up at him. "You're done?"

"Done for now..."

"Right." Shuichi put both hands on the back of Yuki's chair and started pushing; Yuki made a startled sound and dug his feet in.

"What do you think you're..."

"You're going to bed."

"I have to be at Shinjuku at noon."

"So you're going to bed until eleven."

"Ten. Transit time."

"Ten-thirty. You drive like a demon from hell anyway."

Yuki chuckled hoarsely and stood up, and startled himself by swaying. "All right, ten-fifteen..."

Shuichi insinuated himself under Yuki's arm and half-led half-dragged him toward the bedroom, and it didn't take much of a push to get him horizontal. He tugged at the sheets Yuki had collapsed onto, thinking he should have had enough foresight to get those out of the way first; Yuki tugged on Shuichi's wrist instead of the sheets, growling, "Forget 'em."

Shuichi landed in a tangle half-on-top, half-beside him, and froze there blushing. But Yuki didn't seem to have the energy left to either protest or take advantage; cautiously, Shuichi curled up beside him, and settled his head on Yuki's shoulder so that he'd wake up if he started coughing. That was the last coherent thought he had before the alarm went off.

* * *

Shuichi didn't like the next two weeks nearly as much as he'd liked the first two weeks. Yuki left with luggage for three or four days in a row, twice, and he was never around at the same time Shuichi was, and then he would come in late at night wearing expensive-looking clothes and peel them off and fall on his face in bed for a few hours, then get up and wash and dress and leave without eating anything, and he was coughing too much. 

Shuichi had a string of evening concerts during the first ten days of what Yuki called his media feeding frenzy, but on the second Thursday night, Shuichi dug in his heels.

"You're taking me with you tomorrow."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"I told you I'm yours next Tuesday. Wait until then."

"This isn't about me," Shuichi said impatiently. "This is about you. Whoever's watching you there -- they aren't making sure you eat or take your medicine or rest or anything..."

"And I said you can fuss at me next Tuesday. Go write some music."

"I'm going with you tomorrow."

"It's a school, a bookstore, and a publicity dinner. You'll be completely bored out of your mind. Go annoy Hiroshi-kun for a while or something."

"Yuki, I want to go with you!"

"You don't have anything to wear to a bookstore, just a rock concert."

"I'll borrow something."

"When? From who?"

"I'll be back in half an hour." Shuichi grabbed his jacket and his cell phone and ran out.

Forty-five minutes later, Shuichi staggered back, gasping for breath but triumphantly waving a startlingly sane-looking maroon dress shirt and charcoal-colored pants.

"See?...see? I told you I could find something... Sakuma-san even said I can keep them... he says he never wears them... because Kumagoro doesn't go with maroon. So you... you have to take me tomorrow..."

"That's not cause and effect, you twit."

"Why don't you want me there?"

"Why do you want to go?" Yuki asked. "I wouldn't, if I had a choice."

"Because I want to support you!"

For some reason, that completely floored Yuki. Shuichi stared at him, bewildered by his bewilderment.

"Why _wouldn't_ I want to support you?" Shuichi said. "I love you. And you sound like you hate this. So I want to be there and support you until you get through it. Why wouldn't I?"

Still completely speechless, Yuki ran a hand through his hair, then took off his glasses and scrubbed the palm down his face. Then he reached over and caught a handful of Shuichi's shirt and dragged him close enough to kiss for a long, long minute.

Finally, he let him go, and said, "You're a complete idiot, you know that? If you had half a brain you'd be begging me _not_ to take you along."

"I don't care," Shuichi said, and snuggled close.

"Bring your concert clothes too. The black leather set, not that pink and orange thing."

"Huh? ...why?"

"Because you don't have a dress suit for the cocktail party either. And the black leather can at least make an attitude point. Trousers say 'I don't know what the rules are'; black leather says 'I don't care what the rules are.'"

"So you'll take me?" Shuichi said delightedly.

"Moron..."

* * *

On their way through Tokyo, Yuki stopped at a department store and bought a couple dozen generic yellow-paged notebooks, some pre-sharpened pencils, and a cheap package of brush-tipped markers; he put them in his otherwise-empty briefcase, and tossed it into the back seat, and they drove off again. 

"What are those for?" Shuichi asked.

"Writing," Yuki said dryly. "That's what most people do with paper, isn't it?"

"Er... well... yeah, but..." Shuichi stopped, and sighed. "What do I do at the school?"

"You were the one who wanted to come." Then he relented, and said, "I'm just teaching a creative writing seminar. Just sit with the teacher, or with the class, or whatever you like. I'm sure they'll have a music room if you want to wander."

"I want to be where you are," Shuichi said, and looked out at the highway going by.

* * *

It was almost frightening, when Yuki got out of the car. He tossed the driving sunglasses inside, and straightened, and closed his eyes for a moment. And when he put his reading glasses on and looked up again, it was somebody else behind his eyes. 

Caught between awe, intimidation, and worry, Shuichi trailed along behind this tall, graceful, bespectacled stranger who spoke softly and politely and gave the fluttering young teacher who met him at the door a slight rueful smile that had her clutching at the doorframe to keep from passing out. The teacher led them to the staff room and stood around stammering for a while; several other teachers came bustling over to chatter at him, and Yuki was self-effacing and modest... and gradually backing into a corner so that they couldn't come at him from every direction at once. Not from fear; from some gut-level defensive reaction that he couldn't completely hide behind the soft-voiced intellectual character he'd brought out to deal with them.

"Back off!" Shuichi heard his voice say, and clamped both hands over his mouth. "I'm sorry-- I mean -- er -- back off please? I mean..."

Impaled on the end of several teachers' glares and Yuki's devastatingly sardonic one-brow-quirked half-smirk, Shuichi bowed almost double and said, "Look, I'm really sorry, but for God's sake, you've already chased him into a corner, and he's supposed to be teaching anyway, shouldn't somebody be telling us where it is he goes instead of doing the pitchforks and torches scene out of some monster movie? I mean... er... I'm talking too much, aren't I. But still -- jeez, back off, people..."

"Shouldn't you be in class?" one of them asked darkly.

"Excuse me! I graduated last year!" Shuichi protested.

"So what are you doing here now?"

Yuki's eyes glittered golden mirth at him, before Yuki blinked back into that scary hushed-voiced almost-professor and lowered his gaze and said almost shyly -- _shyly?_ YUKI? -- "He's -- with me. I mean, he's... I brought him. If you don't mind..."

Something about the way Yuki said "with me" made Shuichi's face burn. Several of the teachers looked back and forth between them and their eyes started adding up numbers.

Yuki slipped through the crowd of speculative onlookers and walked over and patted Shuichi's shoulder lightly -- and behind the glasses, behind the polite face, there was just a glimmer of his own drily sardonic amusement.

"I'll be fine, really. You don't need to worry so," Yuki said to him, and then turned to the teachers with his hand still resting on Shuichi's shoulder. "He's so solicitous, you know."

Shuichi flinched from the number of _1 1 = 2_ signs clicking into place behind the teachers' eyes, and wheezed, "Yuki, you... you... oh, hell..."

"We should go and see if Kaneko-sensei's room is ready for you," one of them said, and they jostled for the door en masse.

Caught between outrage and humiliation, Shuichi stared after them, torn between protesting more and wanting them long since gone. Yuki cupped a hand to his cheek, and brushed a thumb lightly over the curve, and murmured in his own smoke-husky voice, "At least you picked a hair dye the same color as your blushes. It matches better that way."

"Yuki nan ka -- what the hell did you just go and do that for...?"

"Did you have a better cover story in mind?"

Shuichi made fish faces at him, while Yuki turned toward the door.

"Now where are you going?"

"Apparently, to Kaneko-sensei's room," Yuki said. "Are you coming or not?"

Shuichi had to remind himself how his knees worked. "Oh, hell, wait for me..."

* * *

This is where I got to in 2002; I've got about half of another chapter that's likely to not get done for months _if ever_. Flames are fine, but for Pete's sake -- if anyone writes a "why haven't you updated for so long?" review on this thing, I'm going to channel Yuki and rip their head off with a grapefruit spoon, just because I could saw with the little serrated edges and cackle madly at the screams... . 


End file.
